The present invention relates to loudspeaker enclosures of the low frequency exponential folded horn type. More specifically, it relates to horn enclosures that are optimized for use in an environment corner.
The current invention relates directly to my previous U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/595,204 titled “Convertible Folded Horn Enclosure” and can be considered a contribution over my previous invention with regard to improved compactness, increased versatility, and providing an improvement by comparatively reducing construction costs without the undue sacrifice of the performance, and further improving the utility and configuration capabilities disclosed in the referenced prior art disclosure. The differences disclosed herein will establish the current invention as being critically distinct in composition and form, with advantages being increased over the cited prior art.
The cited prior art disclosure teaches that a large-throated folded horn using multiple flare rates terminating with an appropriately sized mouth for its planned position of operation can provide an extremely wide operational band pass with an extremely short overall horn pathway when the driver(s) are accurately annulled. A device such as disclosed in the prior art negates the necessity of horn pathway length as being an overriding determiner of frequency response smoothness or uniformity of amplitude, and that the determination of the upper frequency corner is removed from being a limiting property of the horn itself to instead being determined by the properties of the driver(s) employed. It is a long established principle in the art that a horn device having multiple flare rates does not exhibit the upper frequency corner limitation typical of single flare rate horns and that the frequency response of such a device is rendered more competitive in bandwidth and overall response uniformity compared to longer pathway horns in that the number of folds are typically reduced per given enclosure volume. The cited prior art disclosure teaches that extremely short pathway horns, the result of a relatively large throat area, and utilizing multiple flare rates, do not tend to suffer from impedance mismatches as do short single-flare rate horns of the same overall lower frequency cutoff (Fc) or flare rate, and that the main consideration in such a device is one of effective impedance matching, not horn pathway length.
It is in keeping with the teachings of the cited prior art, without such disclosure, the efficacy and the desirability of the current invention would be questionable by the generally accepted principles applied to folded horns; that the current invention embodies a shorter overall pathway length than even the prior art device, producing the benefits of reducing material requirements, complexity, and labor, the resulting smaller footprint and lighter weight compared to the prior art apparatus providing a higher degree of desirability between the two.
The current invention is comparatively more economical to build, incorporates a smaller footprint and lighter weight while increasing the available configuration capabilities afforded by the previously cited prior art apparatus without detriment to the overall frequency response, bandwidth, efficiency, and versatility heretofore obtained in the prior art.